I'll say, "Okay, tell me again, who else, where are you at this step?" Good. Not quite right. So they give you a variety of answers, and then finally you say, "Well, it sounds like you don't know who you are at this step." So then I say, "Has listening ever spoken?" Because there's pure listening, there's much to say and that's superficial mind, temporary ego mind. So that being the case, this purity and this silence is always within you. Speaking is always through the ego, either realization and a reasonably awakened one or a confused neurotic one. Life is supposed to be erotic, not neurotic.
Erik: Life is supposed to be erotic?
Jun Po: Yes, not neurotic. Eros, not Neuros, that's one of my jokes.
Erik: That's nice. I think that there are a lot of people who would be interested in going through a training like this, and I'm wondering where do people find the core and the heart of Zen these days. Where can people go to find Zen that can really meet them where they are, not in this older 17th-century style Zen?
Jun Po: We're a post-modern Zen school, and if you go to Mondozen.org, that's the website. On the website, there's the whole story. There's a training manual there, a basic sutra book, the structure and understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And we have a Cyber Sangha program where people from around the world come in, we practice for 70 days together online committing to the practices and stuff. We do Skype calls and Google calls with people one-on-one. I have people fly in and I work with them personally. And we do retreats. In mid-May, we got a retreat in Colorado, a small one, it's a Mondo retreat, which is 26, 27 people coming to that one. And so by going online and pursuing information there, this is one school. This is happening throughout the Buddhist world, how to do this, how to move our tradition forward into current times and circumstances. So this is happening across the board. I've just had a particular vehicle on a way of doing that and it works.
So then the next question is saying, "That being the case, you understand this much, then the next question is, okay, now I don't know a not knowing, get the body involved." So now, first of all, I'm going to ask you who you are and I want you to say, "I don't know," from the ego. Who are you? And make a fist, "Who are you?" I don't know. Feel the psyche interact. Who are you? I don't know. Now how about we cut the head off the beast and get rid of the eye and just say not knowing from the heart? Who are you? I don't know. So we say feel the contraction and the release. You can actually feel the psyche function, or the ego function, inside here, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So we play with that game, so it gets the body involved in the process. Once that's done, then we say, "Okay, got that experience. Feel the difference? Feel it?" "Yes, I can feel the difference between receptivity physically, emotionally, philosophically."
Erik: Life is supposed to be erotic?
Jun Po: Yes, not neurotic. Eros, not Neuros, that's one of my jokes.
Erik: That's nice. I think that there are a lot of people who would be interested in going through a training like this, and I'm wondering where do people find the core and the heart of Zen these days. Where can people go to find Zen that can really meet them where they are, not in this older 17th-century style Zen?
Jun Po: We're a post-modern Zen school, and if you go to Mondozen.org, that's the website. On the website, there's the whole story. There's a training manual there, a basic sutra book, the structure and understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And we have a Cyber Sangha program where people from around the world come in, we practice for 70 days together online committing to the practices and stuff. We do Skype calls and Google calls with people one-on-one. I have people fly in and I work with them personally. And we do retreats. In mid-May, we got a retreat in Colorado, a small one, it's a Mondo retreat, which is 26, 27 people coming to that one. And so by going online and pursuing information there, this is one school. This is happening throughout the Buddhist world, how to do this, how to move our tradition forward into current times and circumstances. So this is happening across the board. I've just had a particular vehicle on a way of doing that and it works.
So then the next question is saying, "That being the case, you understand this much, then the next question is, okay, now I don't know a not knowing, get the body involved." So now, first of all, I'm going to ask you who you are and I want you to say, "I don't know," from the ego. Who are you? And make a fist, "Who are you?" I don't know. Feel the psyche interact. Who are you? I don't know. Now how about we cut the head off the beast and get rid of the eye and just say not knowing from the heart? Who are you? I don't know. So we say feel the contraction and the release. You can actually feel the psyche function, or the ego function, inside here, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So we play with that game, so it gets the body involved in the process. Once that's done, then we say, "Okay, got that experience. Feel the difference? Feel it?" "Yes, I can feel the difference between receptivity physically, emotionally, philosophically."
